Big Changes
by Imaginationqueen87
Summary: The Virals have found themselves on the X-Men's radar as potential students as they are working on their latest mystery. Will they decide to take the professor's offer and finally get help with their powers? Is there something Between Tory and Ben? And what is wrong with Tory? Rated for safety
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Don't own X-Men or Virals

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_Big Changes_

I could hear my heart pounding in my ears as I ran, a gunman hot on my heels, or for all I knew he could be. Then I heard it:

_Crack, crack_

That removed all doubt that he was chasing me. I got up the wall and blanched, the drop was a lot further on this side then it was the on the other side, I had no choice it was jump and risk injury or stay and die. I dropped to the ground.

_Snap_

That wasn't the gun that was coming from my body, I felt it as much as I heard it; my leg had broken.

"Crap" I muttered as my pursuer was on top of the wall and I couldn't run on a broken leg. I was praying that Shelton or Ben was within range to see me in distress and come to my aid.

Suddenly, I see two people coming my way; I didn't know if they were friend or foe; I could only pray they were friend. One was a male with brown hair and a strange visor over his eyes, the other was a girl; her blond hair was down past her shoulder blades and expressive blue eyes were going back and forth between the gunman on the wall and me.

The world went dark for a few minutes, how long I don't know, the next thing I realize is the male is carrying me.

"What happened?" I asked fear edging into my voice more than I would like.

"We'll explain later, but don't worry, you're safe and so are your friends." The blonde replied.

My friends, Hirum, Shelton and Ben, were they safe, could I trust these strangers? I t seemed I had little choice in the matter but to at least vie them the benefit of the doubt until I knew for certain they were truly safe.

"Make sure the ramp is down, we need to get out of here fast." The male carrying me told the girl.

"It is." She replied, I had no idea how she knew since whatever the ramp was attached to had yet to come into view.

"Good, those gunmen are going to realize what happened sooner or later and come for us; we can't have that, not with her hurt."

At that moment, they seemed to realize that I was still clueless about what was going on. The girl placed her hand on the knee opposite my injury comfortingly as we slowed to a walk.

"I don't know if you've heard of us, we're the X-Men." Her voice carried what sounded like very mild a Scottish or Irish accent that sounded interesting.

Shockingly enough I had heard of the X-Men, from my aunt Temperance Brennan of all people. She had found the corps of a teenage girl who carried a strange gene mutation that led her to the Xavier School for the Gifted and the X-Men. She had told me they had been extremely helpful on the case but it was obvious the subject matter disturbed their founder Charles Xavier greatly, turn out he had a teenage daughter that was the same age as the victim. Tempe had told me it wouldn't have surprised her if he went home and spent several hours just spending time with her.

We got to the destination, a jet plan sitting in the center of an undeveloped plot of land. They took us inside and instantly I noticed Hirum, Shelton and Ben all sitting there, waiting for me. The instant I was placed in a chair they all started talking at once.

"Tory, are you okay?" Hi

"What happened?" Shelton

"Why didn't you contact us?" Ben

"One question at a time, Hi, I'm fine, I think my leg is broken but that isn't life threatening by a long shot. Shelton, I was chased by a gunman scaled a wall and found the ground was lower on the other side than it was on the side I came up on, and Ben…" I paused trying my best to come up with a reasonable reason as to why I didn't contact them.

"Calm down everyone, she was being chased by a man with a gun, those circumstances don't exactly lend well to phone calls. I've been there before, believe me the phone is the last thing you think of." The visor-wearing male said as he started towards the front of the jet to get us out of here.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Right now we are going to Morris Island to speak with your parents about a proposition I would like to make to them," a male voice said, it was strange, the voice possessed the same strange mid Atlantic accent as the girl.

We took off and the man approached us along with a woman that looked to be in her thirties, she pulled a first aid kit from a nearby compartment and a strange object that I soon realized was a splint for my leg and got to work on me. I looked at the guys; they were as surprised as I was that the man was in a wheelchair.

The woman cleaned the cuts and scrapes on my face and arms, it was obvious the boys had already endured this treatment. She then went to my leg.

"This is going to hurt, sweetheart, do you want one of your friends to come hold your hand while I splint this?" she asked.

I made eye contact with Ben, imploring him to understand what I wanted, that I wanted him to hold my hand but I couldn't make the words come out of my mouth. He seemed to get it as he moved to sit beside me and took my hand without thought.

She put the split on my leg, and the pain was intense and I squeezed Ben's hand tightly.

After that, the man in a wheelchair began to speak.

"I am Professor Charles Xavier, I'm sorry we haven't done much in the way of introductions yet, we were more concerned with your safety than anything else."

The forward chairs turned to reveal four others ranging in apparent age from about my age to probably close to twenty, that wasn't counting the Professor himself and the woman treating me. She looked to be in her late twenties to early thirties and he looked to be older than Kit, probably mid-forties to nearly fifty granted the fact that he was completely bald didn't help me with estimating his age. They went around introducing themselves.

"I'm Kathy" the blonde who had helped earlier said I noticed her striking blue eyes looked quite a bit like Professor Xavier's own eyes, were they related to each other.

"Don't be surprised if you catch me calling the Professor "dad" it isn't a mistake, he is my father" Kathy continued almost as if she knew what I was thinking.

A red haired woman I hadn't seen before spoke next.

"My name is Jean Grey." She was rather tall and had green eyes and a very athletic build, all the X-Men did if what Aunt Tempe told me was true.

The next one that spoke was the guy in the visor, he seemed a little uncomfortable giving his real name; apparently they didn't often use their actual names in the field.

"I'm Scott, normally in situations like this we would use code names, or those that have them would use them, mine for example is Cyclops, Kathy's code name is Time Trap, due to her ability make it appear as if she has frozen time. Typically the only way we know if she froze us is we don't remember anything from the time we were frozen."

That explained it, why I didn't know how I got away from the gunman.

"Did she freeze me?" I asked.

"I did," Kathy replied "Had circumstances been different I might not have, but the guy had pulled the trigger I only had milliseconds to get you out of there, and that ended up being the only safe way to do it. He unfroze a few minutes later but by that time we were long gone."

I nodded a knot forming in my stomach at the thought of how close I had come to getting shot, most likely the shot would have been fatal. Ben and the others didn't seem to like the thought any more than I did.

The introductions continued, a short brunette introduced herself as Kitty and I assumed that was a nickname to begin with and a girl with auburn hair punctuated with white bangs introduced herself as Rogue.

The woman that treated my leg now stood by Professor Xavier.

"My name is Gael, I came here from Ireland when I was seventeen years old I graduated high school and decided to study medicine. After all of that I returned to the Xavier Institute to help out as a doctor." She started towards a seat as we waited for our parents to arrive. That was the first time I noticed she was favoring her left leg. I didn't ask why, I figured if she wanted us to know, she would have told us.

Professor Xavier had contacted our parents and they soon arrived at the location where the jet sat. He had wanted Kit to be there with us when I was taken to the emergency room to get my leg tended to by a doctor with proper equipment.

To Be Continued…


	2. Chapter 2

I sighed hoping that Whitney wouldn't come with Kit, I really didn't want to see her right now, not with my leg in a splint and steeling up my nerves for a trip to the ER. Our arrival on Morris meant that our parents wouldn't take long to arrive.

Professor Xavier gave me an odd look, he told us he was a telepath and I had a bad feeling he had just heard that thought.

_Crap_

I leaned back in my seat to the best of my ability as we waited for Kit to arrive at the jet.

-**Why do you not wish to see Whitney?**- Charles' asked me telepathically.

-_I don__'__t know how to explain it__…__I just don__'__t feel like dealing with her right now I've known her for six months now and it__'__s like she doesn't know me, she doesn't even try to get to know me-_

I could hear Charles sigh, his blue eyes becoming pensive for a moment as if he were trying to figure out what, if anything he could say.

-**Why do you feel this way?**-

-_She had Kit sign me up to become a debutante, has him convinced it will be good for me to make friends with the girls in my school. What she doesn't realize is those girls can't stand me and the feeling is mutual. I tried to tell her but she just won't listen.__**-**_ I closed my eyes; –_Whitney just wants me to be her living Barbie doll and I hate that. I honestly feel like she's trying to make me someone I'm not, what's worse is she doesn't seem to understand that I don't like this at all.-_

_-_**Have you spoken to Kit about this?**_-_ he seemed to be concerned about something, perhaps the fact that it seemed my father wasn't taking my side on this issue.

_-I try to but every time the topic comes up Whitney is around and I can barely get a word in much less tell her how I feel because she's too busy telling _me_ how I should feel. She doesn't know me well enough to know that!_-

-**How about we have a sit down discussion with Kit and Whitney where you get to voice exactly how you feel about this situation.**- he suggested.

-_It won't work, anything I say to Whitney goes in one ear and out the other._-

-**Then Whitney can wait, Kit is your father and he should petition for your best interests.**-

Hope, finally, if this worked, maybe Kit would finally understand that I don't like Cotillion; I don't want to be a debutante.

Kit arrived a few minutes later and I finally let myself hope that Whitney wasn't with him when I didn't see her come up the ramp.

"Tory, what happened?" he asked, worried about me.

I told him how I ended up with a broken leg and looked to Professor Xavier.

-**Let us get that leg cared for then we will have that sit down chat about your future as a debutante or you leaving that behind you. I want to get those bones set in a proper cast or splint as soon as possible-**

-_Okay_- I wasn't sure about waiting but I thought this was a conversation better had in private in case it dissolved into a big argument.

It didn't take long to get to Roper Emergency room and get inside. I knew it would take forever to get through, but things went surprisingly quickly and I had a new splint on my leg and we were headed back to the X-jet within a few hours.

When we got back the other parents had arrived, Charles had been waiting for us to get into the conversation. I had a splint on my leg; I would get a full-blown cast in a few days when the swelling in my leg had gone down enough that the cast would fit properly.

"Good, everyone is here" Charles said as we entered the jet "come have a seat".

"I don't understand why we're all here." Ruth said looking between Professor X and Hi.

"Your children have some things they would like to tell you, but before we begin I want to make sure that whatever comes out this evening isn't going to color your ideas of who your children are or will be." Charles said his voice held honest concern. What had he seen, had parents really denied their children due to them getting powers?

"Why would this change our opinion of our kids?" Tom Blue asked obviously confused. It was obvious the Stolowitskis and the Devers had the same question in mind, as did Kit. They were wondering what we could possibly have to say to them that they didn't already know; well they couldn't know how much this was going to blow their minds.

Charles watched for a second as I sat down by Ben holding my crutches up until Kit took them and leaned them against the wall.

I looked at Ben, Shelton and Hirum; they all looked as awkward as I felt. I looked at Professor Xavier who had his fingers intertwined at his chest with his elbows on the arms of his wheelchair patiently waiting to allow us to tell our parents what was going on.

I blew a strand of hair from my face steeled my nerves and began to speak.

"You remember when we found Katherine Heaton, before that a monkey on the island threw a dog tag at us that was caked in decades worth of dirt, we broke into lab six to clean it and we discovered the unauthorized lab in the back and that's where we found Cooper in isolation, sick with an experimental strain of Parvovirus." I explained.

Ben picked up where I left off.

"Unbeknown to us this strain was contagious to humans and all four of us caught it." Ben sighed and I decided to jump back in.

"The virus made us sick for a few days but it also modified our DNA." I added. "Hi, do you want to show what we do now?" I asked turning to Hirum. Professor Xavier seemed curious about my choice in people for this demonstration.

"Tory, I'm just curious why you asked Hirum to demonstrate your gifts." Professor Xavier asked.

"Hi can access his powers easier than the rest of us," I explained, "always has."

Hi stood and within seconds had flared his eyes burning gold. I knew what those eyes could see and he began to explain what he could do in this form.

Ruth looked like she was about to faint for a moment, but then she looked at the professor. Mrs. Devers didn't look much better at realizing her son could do the same thing as Hi. The dad's weren't much better, Kit looked as if his brain couldn't keep up with this new information and he was gaping for an answer to what all this craziness was and he was in good company with Mr. Devers and Mr. Blue.

"What do you plan on doing about this?" Ruth demanded.

"I plan to teach them to control these gifts if you will let me, this is their new normal and I believe that they can handle these powers with education in a safe, controlled environment." Professor Xavier said calmly "In other words, I would like for them to join me at my school where they can all learn to master their gifts together with others not unlike themselves."

Our parents all looked confused and concerned.

"How much is this going to cost us, we can't even pay for Dalton Prep much less a boarding school." Lorelai said in confusion.

Charles asked our parents to come speak with him privately while we got to know the students that were present with him.

Kathy was the first to approach us and took a seat near us.

"So what do you think of all of this?" she asked calmly.

"It's overwhelming," Shelton admitted and the rest of us nodded.

"We didn't know there was anyone out there that could help us." I added. "We thought we were on our own."

"Sadly we hear that a lot, there are a lot of people who aren't aware that there is anything like this when they find out their kid has powers, if they ever find out, a lot of kids don't say anything for fear of rejection." Kathy shrugged with a sigh, "I was lucky, being a second generation mutant has the advantage of your parents fully understanding what is going in your body on even when you don't." She shrugged.

Jean and Scott soon joined her, it was obvious our powers; and how we got them had these guys curious, they had never seen this happen before and that shocked me. They were all born with weird DNA their powers just took time to develop. They had all been in their teens when their powers kicked in on them; they ranged in age from 14 to 16. Some were younger when it first happened, Jean had been 10 when they first learned of her gifts, but they had to be sealed until she was actually old enough to handle them.

"You guys have done extremely well for having taught yourselves up to this point." Jean said, to her credit she sounded genuinely impressed by our progress with our powers.

"Thanks, we just went to Loggerhead and practiced with them," I admitted.

"So kind of like we do, we practice with our powers daily to keep control" Scott commented offhandedly.

"Main difference, you had someone to guide you, we had to feel our way on our own." I pointed out.

"Kind of like my dad did when he got his powers," Kathy pointed out, but look at him now. He is the most powerful telepath in the world and his control is without equal.

Our parents came back with Professor Xavier and I knew something was about to change.

To Be Continued…


End file.
